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| Borgias |
The Italians or, to be specific, the papal army, are badly outnumbered 75 to 225, although when the final CGI effects are added, it will look like 2,500 to 25,000.
It is a scene from the first nine episodes of The Borgias, a $40 million, 15th-century saga about notorious Pope Alexander VI and his infamous bastard brood, billed as “the original crime family.”
And why not? This is the historical clan that inspired Mario Puzo’s The Godfather. The series, which premieres Sunday at 10 p.m. on Bravo! as well as on U.S. cable’s Showtime, is the brainchild of Oscar winner Neil Jordan (The Crying Game), who spent years trying to pitch it as a feature film before turning it into a sprawling cable series.
The Canadian/American/Hungarian co-production stars Jeremy Irons as Rodrigo Borgia, a ruthless, manipulative and lascivious cardinal who schemes his way to the papacy then tries to turn it into the family business. Colm Feore opposes him as the powerful and far more conscionable Cardinal (and future Pope) Della Rovere. Young Quebec actor François Arnaud plays Cesare Borgia, Rodrigo’s restless eldest son. British actress Holliday Grainger (Merlin) plays Lucrezia, Rodrigo’s bewitchingly beautiful, crafty daughter.
Jeremy Podeswa, the Toronto-born director who has helmed epic scenes on everything fromThe Pacific to The Tudors, gives the order for his actors to mount their steeds. A cannon or two is tested and smoke wafts across the idyllic country vista. Hungarian extras in tunics and armour — some sporting fake battle scars — put down their hot dogs from a nearby craft services wagon, take up their spears and prepare to face the enemy.
Feore, in a squat black hat and long dark robe that sweeps low over the sides of his mount, looks tall in the saddle and at home on a horse. You’d never know he basically crammed in some quick riding lessons back home in Stratford, Ont., before heading to Hungary.
Irons has the day off. It will be months before the Star catches up with him, outdoors again but this time on the deck of an elegant hotel in Pasadena, Calif., where he is promoting the series on the semi-annual TV critics press tour.
Far from being standoffish, Irons could not be more accommodating, ignoring the warning that his interviewer is battling a cold and insisting on shaking hands. His long, multi-buckled boots look like they were stolen from wardrobe. Irons insists they were bought in a London shoe store.
At first, the Academy Award-winning actor resisted Jordan’s attempts to make him Pope. “He himself didn’t think he was perfect for the part because he didn’t look like Rodrigo Borgia, yeah?” says Jordan, who wrote all nine first season episodes and directed the first two hours. Jordan talked him into it, suggesting Rodrigo had “an almost theatrical power over people at the time” and Irons was just the man for that job.
“The fact that you’re much more handsome that Rodrigo Borgia,” he told Irons, “don’t let that get in the way, man.”
Rodrigo was a ruthless, Machiavellian Pope and a scandalous one at that, boasting many mistresses and engaging in countless orgies. Irons wasn’t about to pass judgment, however. As the 62-year-old actor told critics gathered in Pasadena, “I think he’s pretty good guy just doing the best he can.”
Times were different back then, says Irons. “There were murders in Rome every night, poisonings most weekends. There was incest here, sodomy there. You know, it was a good old rolling, rollicking society.”
Given the U.S. cable perimetres, the series gets fairly graphic, although Jordan doesn’t dwell on the lurid. Bravo! plans to air it uncut.
Irons, who has played Kings (Richard II), priests (The Mission) and saints (John the Baptist inGodspell), as well as a man accused of murder (his Oscar-winning turn in Reversal of Fortune), says he never judges his characters and isn’t going to start with Rodrigo.
“I thought he was quite a good guy,” says Irons. “But George Bush probably thought he was quite a good guy, too. I mean, they all do. Berlusconi, they think they’re wonderful. You know, everybody does. Putin . . . Stalin probably liked himself. You know, it’s for us to judge them, I think,”
Jordan, chiefly inspired by author Alexandre Dumas’ non-fiction account The Crimes of the Borgias: Evil in the Name of God, says Irons was the perfect Pope. “For him to take on a part which has such scope and magnitude and explore it at such length . . . he’s just a marvellous actor.”
Irons says working with Jordan was enriching and collaborative, even though they didn’t always see eye to eye. “I put my work in the areas I thought weren’t right and he swallowed and took it,” says Irons. He’d look at my notes and go, ‘That’s good, no, no; that’s terrible, I would never write that, that’s terrible . . . he basically cut out all the b.s.”
Sources: http://www.thestar.com
